DEAD BOYFRIENDS

Yet again, St. Paul’s St. George scatters the dragons who menace a damsel in distress.

Millionaire ex-cop Rushmore McKenzie, who put in almost a dozen years as a Minnesota cop before a windfall insurance settlement allowed him to pack it in, heeds a plaintive cry for help from a beset Merodie Davies. “It’s my boyfriend,” she moans. “He’s dead.” Her boyfriend is indeed dead, his skull smashed by a softball bat. Plaintive cries from distressed damsels are meat and potatoes for McKenzie (Pretty Girl Gone, 2006, etc.), particularly when a thug of a cop starts shoving Merodie around. So of course he intervenes, winds up jailed and, as a consequence, is absent without leave from a dinner dance, standing up his main squeeze, Nina Truhler, who’d bought a spectacular new dress for the occasion. (Having heard it all before, Nina has zero tolerance for no-shows.) McKenzie also fears Merodie is being railroaded by big-time politicos with arcane agendas. After a few more dead boyfriends, plus some obligatory beatings (some suffered, some inflicted), McKenzie realizes that almost no one involved with Merodie is who or what he or she appears to be. But most readers will have figured that out long since.